The Ritz has been welcoming its clients again as of June 2016. One of the most mythical five star hotels on this planet has resurfaced after more than three years of constructions and some unforeseen events.
An troubled opening
On January 19th 2016, a fire started on the seventh and last floor of the building, causing important damage to the roofing and to the seventh floor, pushing back the planned opening date.
[1]Initially closed on August 1st 2012 to reopen after construction in summer 2014, the 15, place Vendôme site will have had to have waited until the beginning of June 2016 to reopen its doors and regain its title of luxury hotel.
Its owner, the Egyptian Mohammed Al-Fayed who has taken over since 1979, did not hesitate to spend to give it a worthy rennovation and to top the highest luxury charts.
It was a 140 billion euro construction site that the billionaire gave himself in order to offer its wealthy clients the highest comfort in its 71 rooms and 71 suites as well as the elegance and art de vivre of French lifestyle, as is pointed out on the hotel website.
(It will be no less than 1 000 € a night breakfast included to sleep at the Ritz. The hotel’s nicest suite is worth 28 000 € a night).
“I dream of a home which I would be proud to be associated to», famously claimed the founder César Ritz who by buying private mansions back in 1898 already envisioned the grandeur of a palace.
[2]The new 2016 Ritz blends its history and its historically classified woodworking with modern times. The prestigious suites are more spacious and include the lastest technologies, which were lacking before the renovation.
A new Coco Chanel beauty-spa, a completely renovated lengendary pool, the creation of a summer restaurant under a mobile glass roof and a new restaurant entrusted to the chef Nicolas Sale. This young and very promising Michelin-starred chef will bare the heavy task to carry on the huge culinary heritage inherited from the famous chef Augustus Escoffier who left serious imprints in gastromy when he was head chef of the Ritz from 1898 till 1920, ones that to this day still influence many chefs.
[3]The myth is ready to come back to life
From Proust to Coco Chanel, from Malraux to Charlie Chaplin or from Hemingway to Lady Diana, it’s a Who' s Who of celebrities which made Ritz between 1898 and 2012 the legend and the myth that it is today. Today, a new page is turning just as the luxury hotel business is dealing with an important crisis with turnover losses between 10 and 40 % since the Islamic terrorist attacks of November 2015. The great and the good wait for this renaissance like that of a masterpiece in a museum.
Here the museum it is place Vendôme and the Ritz a jewel.